Your Data

Financy is local-first: there’s no account, no cloud, no telemetry. Your data is a file on your disk that you fully control.

The `.financy` file

Each document is a single SQLite database with a .financy extension. Move it, copy it, back it up, or keep it in a synced folder (while the app is closed). It’s a normal file.

Saving

How a document saves depends on whether it’s encrypted:

Unencrypted files have no Save button. Every change is written through to the file immediately with ACID guarantees, so a crash or power loss can’t leave you with a half-written document.
Encrypted files save manually — press Save (Cmd/Ctrl-S) or File ▸ Save. A document with unsaved changes shows a • in the title bar and prompts you to Save / Discard / Cancel when you close it or open another file. This is the deliberate trade-off that keeps your decrypted data in memory and never writes it to disk in plaintext.

SQLite isn’t designed for two machines writing the same file at once. Don’t open the same .financy from multiple devices simultaneously.

Password encryption

You can protect a document with a passphrase. An encrypted .financy file is sealed with XChaCha20-Poly1305 (authenticated, so tampering is detected) under a key derived from your passphrase with Argon2id (a memory-hard function that resists brute-force attacks). The file on disk is therefore unreadable — and unmodifiable — without your password.

Create encrypted — set a password in the first-run Setup Wizard or File ▸ New… (leave it blank for an unencrypted file).
Set / Change Password… — encrypt an existing document, or re-key one that’s already encrypted.
Remove Password… — turn an encrypted document back into a plain file.

While an encrypted document is open, its data lives only in memory; it is written to disk only when you Save, and only ever in encrypted form.

There is no backdoor. If you forget the passphrase, the file cannot be recovered — not by you, and not by the Financy authors. Store it somewhere safe.

Files menu

New… — create a fresh document (asks for currency and an optional password).
Open… / Open Recent — open existing files; the last file reopens on launch. Encrypted files prompt for the passphrase.
Save — write an encrypted document to disk (Cmd/Ctrl-S; not needed for unencrypted files, which auto-save).
Set / Change Password… · Remove Password… — manage encryption (see above).
Save a Copy… — write a clean snapshot elsewhere (e.g. a dated backup).
Setup Wizard… — re-run the first-run wizard any time.

Safety by design

Atomic writes — the file is never left in a partial state.
Automatic backup on upgrade — opening a file made by an older version writes a .bak copy before migrating it to the current schema.
Forward-compatibility guard — Financy refuses to open a file written by a newer version than you’re running (with a clear message), rather than risk misreading it. Update the app, then open the file.

Backups

Because it’s just a file: copy the .financy somewhere safe, or use Save a Copy… periodically. That’s a complete, portable backup of everything.

Export to CSV

File ▸ Export CSV… writes all your transactions to a plain CSV (Date, Payee, Category, Account, Amount, Memo), in date order, with plain decimal amounts — handy for spreadsheets, taxes, or sharing. The format round-trips with CSV import: export, edit in a spreadsheet, and bring it back in.

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